A Crime Fiction Blog

NationalOpera

Young Agatha Miller riding a donkey in the desert. Normal activities in the British colonies

Some of you will know that Agatha Christie was greatly influenced by the Middle East thanks to her second husband Max Mallowan, whom she met during an excavation in modern Syria. But she was also very fond of Egypt, having spent her early 20s in Cairo, dancing at balls with soldiers and living the life of (as often described in her books) a “young bright thing”. Besides partying and dancing, while in Egypt she became very interested in the forgotten and almost forbidden, Pharaoh Akhenaten, husband of the well known Queen Nefertiti and father of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.